Crime Intelligence officers following a tip stopped a white truck in a Grahamstown supermarket parking lot on 27 August 2009 and found 24 bags of dagga worth about R1.2 million. One suspect was arrested; police believed the truck came from the Free State.
🇿🇦 Grahamstown (Makhanda), Eastern Cape · South Africa
A truckload of dagga with an estimated street value of R1.2 million was confiscated after police stopped the truck behind the Shoprite at the Market Square Mall in Grahamstown on the afternoon of 27 August 2009.[1]According to the police duty officer, Superintendent Martha Mankayi, police had received information they had been following, and Crime Intelligence inspectors Dawie Barnard and Marius Herselman, working an anti-crime operation, tailed the truck and stopped it in the supermarket parking lot.[1]
In the back of the white truck officers found 24 bags containing dagga.[1]Police arrested one suspect found in the vehicle, a young-looking man who was guarded by two rifle-armed officers; the truck was believed to be from the Free State.[1]A crowd of shoppers watched as a local tow company’s truck proved too light for the laden dagga truck, so officers unloaded bags by hand into a police bakkie while onlookers counted aloud and photographed the scene on their cellphones.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The article gives no separate date for the stop; 27 August 2009 is the day before its publication date.
Only one source could be opened for this event, so no fully independent second outlet confirms the details.
No weight for the 24 bags of dagga was published.
No name or court outcome for the arrested suspect was reported.
The article recalls a separate R1.3-million N2 bypass bust from November 2008 and a separate R105,000 roadblock seizure, different events left out here.
Free State police stopped a truck on the N1 south on 7 November 2026 and found 452 one-kilogram bales of dagga, but the driver jumped out of the moving vehicle about 100 metres from Parys police station and escaped on foot. The truck was impounded and its owner questioned; no arrest for the load had been reported.
Soldiers of 10 South African Infantry Battalion seized 78 kg of dagga valued at R473,000 during Operation CORONA patrols in the Musina area along the Limpopo River. The SANDF said the cannabis was allegedly intended to be smuggled into South Africa.
Police stopped a white Isuzu truck on the N4 near Vandyksdrift on 19 October and found 55 bags of compressed dagga weighing 1,680 kg, which they valued at R12 million. Two men who arrived in a Polo and allegedly offered the officers money were arrested with the driver.
Secunda Flying Squad officers found 103 kg of dagga worth about R800,000 in a Gauteng-registered Honda Civic stopped on the N17 near Leandra on 19 October 2026. The driver abandoned the car and fled on foot; the vehicle and the dagga were seized.
